The Rising Hour | With Brett Nortier of Rosemead Artisan Bakery

“Come at 4am. There’ll be loud music playing and the coffee machine will be on.”

Say no more.

There’s a sweet serendipity to be invited in behind the scenes – when someone opens the private doors to their passion. And more so when those doors open with the scent of butter and bread.

It’s the early hours in Yzerfontein – it’s the West Coast, and the sun won’t rise until close to 8am. The streets are quiet, the air smells salty, blowing off the cold Atlantic water. There’s a soft drizzle of rain.

You park in the parking lot. Close to the midnight hours, the streets are blue-black. But there’s a light shining through the glass doors at Rosemead Artisan Bakery. Inside, a man is moving back and forth between the floured countertops. Behind him are big – very big – ovens. You watch a while before you go inside. The scene is romantic. Idyllic. Like the opening credits to a movie. Anything seems possible.

It’s quiet now. But in a few hours there will be people quickly setting foot inside – the barefoot surfer and his dog, the genteel older couple with their newspaper, the young bohemians who are glad to be out of Cape Town. Some will even arrive before opening time, hoping for an early coffee. If it were December, then the line would be long – an unending stream for three to four hours. So you’re lucky you’ve paid a visit on a Thursday in March. Over the course of the morning (four hours pass by in an instant) you’ll watch these comers-and-goers. All of them Brett will greet. He seems to be on a first-name basis with most. You’ll also meet his brother, his mother-in-law (who makes the rusks), and even his wife and children – who live five minutes up the road.

When you go inside, the musical score is fitting: Don Henley’s Boys of Summer. An exceptionally apt theme tune for a bakery with a distinctly laid-back feel. But don’t let the vibe deceive you – there is a serious approach to quality here. This may, or may not (you’ll have to find out for yourself), be the best bread you ever try. And you won’t be the first to think so – in fact, 893 people have vouched for it on Google reviews. The most recent of which proclaims:

“This is the best bakery in [the] Cape Province. If you walk in you are part of an experience. The smell, the look and the people… If I [were to] live in Yzterfontein, this bakery will lead to my end, they will have to put their bread in my coffin one day. I challenge you to prove me wrong.”

I ask Brett about this. His response is humble. It’s clear that whatever is happening here – the subtle magic – has happened organically. They don’t have a website. Their Instagram page is refreshingly uncurated. Their Facebook page was hacked a few years ago and never revived (much to Brett’s satisfaction). And if you look around the bakery, you’ll find no sign at the till begging you to leave a review. You aren’t being coaxed into a positive feeling. That becomes all the more part of the growing excitement. Social media might have made things so agonisingly accessible that barely anything seems like a hidden gem. The untapped, untouched spaces of the planet have been overrun by the uninfluential influencer. But here you are, feeling like you’re privy to something sacred.

So what is it? Why do people keep coming back? Why can’t you get your hands on a baguette in December? Well, it’s that ‘thing’ of course – the timeless basics: good. Simple. Delicious. No frills, no fuss – no lipstick on a pig. It’s an ‘if you know, you know’ type of situation.

The idea is to stick to the classics and do them incredibly well, with the best quality ingredients. “We have three kids, and we want everyone to be nourished – not just fed,” says Brett.

The atmosphere at Rosemead Artisan Bakery encapsulates a sense of the unhurried, unpretentious surfer town – the Muizenberg, perhaps, of 10 years ago, before gentrification became an actualised buzzword. It’s honest and easy-going and not dolled up for show. And it makes sense – in a way, owner and Head Baker Brett Nortier has recreated a sense of his upbringing in the ‘Deep South’, where he cut his culinary teeth by learning the basics at his aunt’s bakery in Kalk Bay.

“In my mid-teens, my aunt returned from a small French village where she’d been learning to bake. She opened a bakery in a double garage on Rosmead Road, an old cobbled street in Kalk Bay. For pocket money, my brother and I helped out – making cheese sticks, coffee, whatever was needed. The bakery was just across from a great wave, so we’d come in early, bake, go for a surf, and help out again after. It was a cool way to grow up – walking down in the mornings, watching the sunrise over the sea. My aunt would be on the wall, waving her arms to call us in: ‘We’re busy! Come and help.’ Back then we didn’t have phones. From Grade 6, we’d be surfing in Kommetjie or Kalk Bay, just leaving notes on the fridge with a whiteboard marker: ‘In Noordhoek. See you at 8.’”

After school, Brett went to culinary school, where he met his wife, Anli. “We were both doing fine-dining internships – I was at the Greenhouse, then rated the top restaurant in the country, and she was at Terroir. After that, we helped out at my aunt’s bakery again before moving to Stellenbosch, where we spent five years at a great bakery – I probably learned the most there. But we wanted to be near the sea and always dreamed of starting something of our own. Ten years ago, we visited for a weekend, and someone mentioned a spot we could rent – a padstal on the R27. We checked it out and said, ‘Let’s do it.’ We took out a loan and launched with just the two of us – she did pastry, I did bread. I handled deliveries, she did the invoicing. We were washing dishes, doing everything ourselves. Some nights we only slept two or three hours, then started again the next day. Slowly we added help, and eventually moved here – we’ve been in this building for seven years now. This was the original Yzerfontein shop – it had the old-school Coca-Cola sign and everything.”

The approach at Rosemead runs through every aspect – local, artisanal, well-crafted. From the traceable supply chain (all the suppliers are written on a blackboard), who form a network of mindful, quality-focused makers that supply their flour, their coffee, their eggs, and their meat, through to the wares.

“What I started realising is the more these kinds of like-minded businesses can support each other, the better – consciously buying something from the smaller guy. We’ve got a lady up the road who supplies us with eggs – gosh, those chickens have a good life! And our coffee cup sets – they’re handmade by a friend of ours who’s a potter. Each one is a little different and yes, they cost a bit more, but they’re super special.”

What’s to be loved is also the process in action. You can see it all happening – the loaves go in, they come out. The timers tick and the mixers churn in plain sight. And periodically, the smells keep changing: first, the nutty scent of the first loaves. A wash of butter as the croissants come out. A wave of sweetness, like a cloud, when the pasteis de nata emerge. No wonder you don’t want to leave.

And the man behind it all is baking. Baking, sharing a joke with the staff, and enjoying a toasted sandwich by the window – where he waves off a mom and her son, who each carry off a loaf of sourdough, carefully wrapped in tissue paper like the beautiful bounty that they are. “People are surprised to see the owner working behind the scenes,” says Brett.

The quality is consistent – that’s a non-negotiable. But, like all things artisanal, you’ll find subtle variations. And perhaps this in itself is reason enough to keep coming back – to see how the flavour of their sought-after sourdough subtly shifts with the seasons.

“People ask, ‘Is your bread as good as this person’s bread?’ I’d say you’d have to eat our bread 10 days in a row – winter, spring, summer, autumn – and then do that at every other bakery. Because every loaf is not going to be perfect every day. The temperature is different every day, the flour is different every day. Also, we all have different opinions – I like it to be really dark, and the crust to be a bit too thick. My wife prefers it a bit lighter and crispy. So what’s perfect for me and perfect for you is completely different. And I think that’s what makes it so unique – that we have customers coming in and saying they want the slightly darker one.”

As the world becomes increasingly overrun by AI – spreading its bland canvas in the pursuit of singularity, perfection, uniformity – these qualities are surely going to become increasingly desirable: the hand of the maker, the imperfectly perfect. And so too will the spaces like Rosemead Artisan Bakery, where you’ll find community. Connection. And good conversation.

“We’re here to make people happy. People must feel relieved when they come here.”

It’s easy to believe.

“We’ve got ten minutes to kill. Would you like a croissant and a coffee?”

It’s an easy yes. And soon, a thing of beauty is placed in front of you – burnished and buttery, still warm from the oven.

“Nothing better than that right?”

Featured Products

Words by Georgina Selander
Images by JDee Allin

More from our blog:

Mussel Foraging in Plettenberg Bay | Memory Cloth | In Studio with Tres Nagual